Letters

Most of the New-French habitants inside & around the fort, uncertain of the outcome, were at pains to maintain a precarious neutrality, but a few of the younger, such as one “Alexis Cuillerier” (then 17, & an idolizer of Pontiac) volunteer’d in July to raise additional troops from among the Illinois to storm the fort. Pontiac’s reply, as my father recorded it, echoes his dark misgivings at Castines Hundred: If he were “Angélique’s” friend Major Gladwin, Pontiac declar’d to his young admirer, or “Antoine’s” friend Captain Rogers, he would order is troops to storm the walls, knowing that many of his troops would die, but that his superior numbers would carry the day. But the red man was not a troop; he was a brother, and one did not expend a brother. Attack’d by surprise, the red man would fight to the death. To avenge an insult or measure up to a high example he would undergo any privation, sustain any amount of accidental, unforeseen loss — as witness the bravery of his brothers at Presque Isle, Le Boeuf, Venango. But to take a calculated loss: to make a move certain to cost the life of some of his brothers, however equally certain of victory — this was not in the red man’s nature. The siege was a mistake, almost surely doom’d to failure; but to storm the fort was out of the question. He was frankly improvising, perfectly aware that time was not on his side, that his authority diminisht day by day. Captain Rogers had already slipt thro with nearly 300 Rangers & 22 whaleboats of relief supplies for Gladwin; if any more got thro, the fort would be able to survive the winter, and the siege would have to be lifted. Perhaps the angel of the Delaware Prophet would revisit & readvise him? Meanwhile, here was Barbados rum taken by the Potawatomis from Fort St. Joseph…

The rest of the tale is not agreeable to tell. Pontiac’s angel never reappear’d. “Angélique” & “Antoine” had business back at Castines Hundred, and were not seen again in Detroit until 1767. By July, news reacht Lord Amherst in New York of the scope & seriousness of the war. Furious, he order’d that no Indian prisoners be taken; that women & children not be spared; that the race be extirpated. He put a thousand-pound bounty on Pontiac’s scalp. He commended the ingenious tactic of Captain Ecuyer at Fort Pitt, who made presents to the Delawares of infected blankets & handkerchiefs from the fort’s smallpox hospital — and he recommended (in a postscript to his letter of 7 July to Bouquet at that fort) much more extensive use of this novel weapon. He sympathized with Bouquet’s suggestion that the Indians be hunted down with dogs, and regretted that the distance from good English kennels made the plan unfeasible. When he learnt in September that Pontiac had destroy’d two relief expeditions en route to Detroit, he doubled the bounty, & fumed at the delay of his own relief. As autumn came on, one by one the Indian nations sued for peace; by October only Pontiac’s Ottawas held the siege. On 3 October, H.M.S. Michigan battled its way thro them to the fort with winter supplies. Two weeks later Pontiac order’d the siege abandon’d and, out of favor in his village, went off westward in November to the country of the Illinois, accompanied by young “Alexis Cuillerier.”

On 7 October George III actually issued his proclamation, but the settlers ignored it: the Indians’ front had weaken’d, and the British troops were too few & too busy to turn back the wagon-trains crowding over the mountains. On 17 November Amherst was relieved, by Major General Gage in Montreal, as Commander of British forces in America, and happily return’d to his English fields & kennels. Smallpox raged that winter among the tribes around Fort Pitt, in some villages killing one out of every three.